


Mountain High, River Low

by teacup_of_doom



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2012-10-14
Packaged: 2017-11-16 06:56:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teacup_of_doom/pseuds/teacup_of_doom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tom and Carl watching and mentoring Nita and Kit through So You Want To Be A Wizard, Deep Wizardry, Wizards at War, and the day the kids go off to college.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Cross posted from my LJ. Written for the dai_sitho challange on LJ. Beta'd by rusting_roses and phoenix_laugh.

Carl always called it their "spidey sense", the little inkling that alerted any Wizardly Advisory that someone was in need, and would come seeking for, well, advice. He'd never admit it, but Tom sometimes felt like it was a superpower—a wizardly version, at any rate. Wizardry could be a superpower in it's own right, but, having the "spidey sense" only applied to Advisories and had been a little disconcerting to get used to.  
  
The fresh coffee had just started percolating, the smell of French roast filling the kitchen, when Tom felt it. It was a familiar tingling in the forefront of his mind, not unpleasant, but persistent. Like pins and needles, with a softer edge.  
  
Tom Swale, Wizard Advisory and fiction writer, looked down the counter and onto the floor where his partner—in every sense of the word—lay on his back, trying in vain to fix their kitchen sink, jeaned legs sticking out haphazardly, tools floating in the air above them as if they were in outer space, and took a moment to watch his partner's movements with a small smile—while pouring himself coffee.  
  
"How's it going down there, handyman?" Tom asked, teasingly.  
  
There was an annoyed, frustrated grunt, and the sound of water gushing somewhere. "What don't you come down here and find out?" Carl's muffled reply ground out from somewhere amidst the pipes.  
  
Tom grinned, chuckling. "Nah, I think I'll leave that to you. Clearly fixing World Gates is easier than fixing plumbing."  
  
"Damn straight." Came the prompt reply. "How do the Muggles deal with this?!"  
  
Tom laughed, and then kept laughing as the pipe spewed water, visibly startling Carl and making the floating tools quiver. There was the sound of Carl gasping out the Speech, and the water stopped abruptly, and then cursing in several alien dialects.  
  
"Still don't want to call someone?" Tom asked, amused.  
  
"I can fix anything." Carl spluttered. "Just watch." He sounded determined. There was another rush of the Speech, and the parts of Carl that Tom could see that had been wet were suddenly dry.

"We're going to have a visitor, Spidey sense went off." Tom replied, not wanting to discourage the other man with more teasing. Tom may have the good sense not to make the attempt at all, but Carl usually got the job done somehow or another.  
  
Carl had already started to move something with a wrench. "What?" He shouted.  
  
Tom took a sip of coffee, opened his mouth to answer, and was interrupted by their dog Annie's loud barking in the front yard. Annie could wait for a moment, he decided, and raised his voice slightly. "Now I think we have visitors, you might want to-"  
  
Annie's barking grew louder, blocking anything Carl would have been able to hear. Tom muttered something unkind about her barking under his breath, slipped his mug onto the counter and headed out to the porch, Carl still fiddling with the pipes. Only wizards—or people who knew about wizardry (including the postman), could actually get through the hedges. He and Carl had spelled their yard that way, so that innocent passersby would ignore the talking koi in the fish pond, or any wizardry that happened to be going on that spilled into the yard. So he wasn't surprised that Annie—their wizard early warning system, so to speak, would be barking at a probably wizard in the yard. He discretely took a peek through a window.  
  
While it was normal to see wizards coming to their Advisories for help while on errantry, these kids seemed very young, and were clearly not used to the oddness that generally cropped up with wizardry. These two kids couldn't be more than twelve, thirteen, if that. The boy was ordinary looking, a stocky, short, Hispanic looking boy with worn out clothes and straight black hair. He seemed to be trying to look at everything at once. The girl was a little mousy, and looked a little similar to the boy, dark hair, but bright eyes. She seemed to be a little spooked, and Annie's barking clearly wasn't helping. And did she have bruises? She was also edging away from the still barking Annie, and appeared to be considering the option of bolting.  
  
"All right, all right,  ~~.~~ " he said, amused, trying to calm Annie down. Annie didn't stop. "All right, Annie, let's see what you've got this time." Tom slid the screen door open. He could see their eyes open in surprise and almost smirked. He knew that the neighborhood kids had dubbed this house Crazy Swale's. These two were probably surprised that he didn't have two heads and tentacles for arms.  
  
They looked at each other for a moment. Tom's mind immediately labeled the situation "awkward", so he set about trying to break the moment. "Well," Tom started, not annoyed at all that Annie had (again) dragged people into his yard. It wasn't as if they hadn't exactly been unexpected—though the kids probably didn't know that. "I see you've met Annie..."  
  
It was the mousy girl who spoke first. "She, uh." The girl glanced down to a very happy, smiling, amused, Annie, with her tail wagging contentedly. "She found me looking through your hedge."  
  
Tom smiled. "That's Annie for you" he said, resigned. Annie had started doing it as a puppy, especially to fellow wizards, whether or not they had actually been looking through the hedge. "She's good at finding things." Like trouble, Tom's mind supplied. "I'm Tom Swale." He held out his hand.  
  
The girl took his hand, and they shook in the human's universal gesture of greeting. "Nita Callahan." She introduced herself.  
  
"Kit Rodriquez," Kit also introduced himself, from his place next to Nita, as he and Tom shook hands as well.  
  
"Good to meet you. Call me Tom." Tom said as warmly as he could. His "spidey sense" had stopped buzzing now, replaced with a warm, content hum that had moved to the back of his mind. These were obviously the people who had come for Advisory. Nita seemed to be the calmer of the two, Kit the more outgoing, up front type, while Nita seemed to be content to watch, learn, and then act, eyes wide and taking it all in. They would be good partners, like himself and Carl, if they stayed with wizardry and became full partners. Only their Ordeals would tell, and that young, they had to be on Ordeal. "What can I do for you?"  
  
"Are you the Advisory?" Kit asked.  
  
Tom's eyebrows rose. Did the fact that he wasn't upset about his obviously pleased dog had dragged them into the yard not tip them off? Then again, maybe Kit was just asking to make sure. "You kids have a spelling problem?" He asked with an small smirk.  
  
Nita grinned at Tom's fully intentional pun and, to Tom's curiosity, called over her shoulder. "Fred?"  
  
Tom watched, now curious and surprised as a small white spark bobbed into existence between the two kids and hovered there as if it was a natural thing to do. The surprise must have shown on his face because Nita added. "He's a white hole. He swallowed my space pen."  
  
White hole. Tom's brain shorted-out slightly. Right. A white hole. Just a small, tiny, white hole, with the gravitational pull of all the stuff it had gobbled, that should be ripping the earth up where they stood, emitting loads of radiation. Just a white hole, and they'd come because it had eating a space pen?! How did a white hole even get it's hands on a space pen? Wait,  _Fred_?  
  
Fred the white hole hiccuped, there was a  _bang_! Kit and Nita scurried out of the way, obviously a practiced movement because Tom had barely registered the sound before fourteen, one kilogram bricks of what  _had_  to be 999-fine Swiss gold, popped into existence and fell with a loud clatter on the patio tiles that started Annie barking again.  
  
Tom's brain froze for a moment at the sight, there were some things that wizardry didn't prepare you for, and that much gold appearing out of thin air had to be one of them. He blinked. "I can see this is going to take some explaining." Tom said tactfully. "Come on in."  
  
They followed him into the house, and he snatched up his coffee cup from the counter as he led them, wide-eyed and curious into the kitchen, where Carl was still trying to fix the plumbing. Tom tried very, very hard not to laugh as the sound of a wrench sliding off a pipe and landing on something decidedly human and squishy came from under the sink, along with Carl's injured cry of "Nnngg!" accompanied every one of the floating tools dropping loudly on the floor. Carl's resultant swearing in four different alien dialects, but mainly human ones, was very, creative.  
  
Tom did smile then, but for the kid's sake tried to look like he was frowning. Out of the corner of his eye he could see them hide awe-struck grins. "Such language in front of guests! You ought to sleep with Annie in the doghouse. Come out of there, we're needed for a consultation."  
  
"You really are wizards!" Nita cried out, surprised.  
  
Tom got the sudden urge to hug her. He could remember being that relieved that he wasn't entirely crazy, and that magic was real and there were other wizards, and it was all real. He chuckled. "Sure we are. Not that we do much freelancing these days—better to leave it to the younger practitioners, like you two." After a while, when the Ordeal power waned, and you got older, you got tired. You also had to face the real world, and the fact you couldn't wizard yourself a house. Or food. Or any one of a hundred different things vital to every day life.  
  
Carl shimmied out from under the sink, brushing water droplets off of his sweatshirt. "Carl Romeo," he said, the Brooklyn accent warm. He shook hands first with Kit, and then Nita, then turned his attention to Fred. "And who's this?" It was an amazing difference between wizards and "normal" people. Wizards assumed everything was sentient until proven otherwise.  
  
Fred hiccuped; the resulting bang produced six absolutely stunning black star sapphires the size of tennis balls that bounced off the kitchen linoleum, but only slightly, and rolled, undamaged, until their kinetic energy stopped.  
  
"Fred here," Tom said just a bit dryly, "has a small problem."  
  
"I wish  _I_  had problems like that." Carl remarked, with a bit of a grin on his face. "Something to drink people? Soda? I don't think water is an option, sorry."  
  
They went through the whole explanation, who they were, what both he and Carl did, not only as Advisories, but as regular, working human beings. They even got the kids to meet Peach. Tom thought this was going to be a fairly easy Advisory (admittedly, as easy as getting a space pen out of a  _white hole_  could be), and then he'd asked Nita and Kit to tell him the whole story. And then they said that the  _Naming of the Lights_  was missing, and suddenly, Tom's stomach dropped. He exchanged a look with Carl. He knew the look in Carl's eyes. He knew almost every one of Carl's expressions, but the look he wore now probably mirrored his own. Concern, very deep concern, not only because the book was missing, but also because if these kids had discovered it missing, than their Ordeal involved getting the book  _back_. The book was dangerous in itself. Not to mention whatever had taken the book—and whatever did had to have power. A lot of it. They were just kids...  
  
He told them that they'd call and Advisories meeting, just before Fred dropped a year's worth of TV guides on the table. As if the Advisories, as a collective, would be able to do anything for part of an Ordeal. It made his stomach twist, but The Powers That Be were very clear on that point; unless the wizards were they themselves a part of the Ordeal, there was to be no outside interference.   
  
"What is the Naming of the Lights?" Kit was suddenly asking him. "We tried to get Fred to tell us last night, but it kept coming out in symbols that weren't in our books."  
  
Tom summarized it briefly, explaining how the Book of Night with Moon defined everything, every atom, every gluon and quark of their Universe, of everyone and anything they loved, and in all universes. He could see how disturbed about it they were, just as much as he disliked the idea of actually reading from the book. There was too much power in it, for his tastes. Tom shuddered internally, and then told them about the Book Which is Not Named—the dark book, the one that skewed the universes. If that was read from... he wasn't sure which book was worse to read from.   
  
Carl and Peach saved him from going into dark musings, if only because Peach's antics were always amusing, unless you were trying to get her use precognition. When she was finally convinced to do so, it didn't alleviate the fears of either Tom or the two kids. Carl was, as usual, his stoic self, down to business, getting the kids set up with their time and helping to fix Fred's....space pen problem.  
  
Before they left, Tom, worry still sitting in his gut and beginning to churn, couldn't let the kids leave, just running off into whatever darkness their Ordeal took them into. "Let us know how things turn out." Tom said. "Not that we have any doubts—two wizards who can produce a white hole on their first try are obviously doing alright. But give us a call. We're in the book." It didn't make him feel all that much better, but he could see the kid's shoulders ease, just a little bit. It wasn't easy for fledgling wizards, and Tom knew that it was nice to know that someone—anyone—had their back. Even if he couldn't interfere.  
  
He and Carl saw the kids to the front door, said their goodbyes. Tom would have lingered, watched the kids trample back out of the hedges, but Carl gently pulled him by the shirt inside. Carl didn't let go until they were safely back in the kitchen, and Tom leaned gently against the counter, a frown gracing his features, edges of his mouth dipping slightly, his forehead creased. He felt Carl move closer, and then his partner had nudged his shoulder gently. "What's wrong old man? They seem like good kids."  
  
"They are. Smart too, and clearly powerful."  
  
"I know. They summoned a white hole, after all. They've got a lot power, and had clear attention to details. That'll serve them well, during and after Ordeal. I have to admit, calling the white whole Fred was inspired." Carl replied, trying to pull him out of the mood. "As was the result of the—ah—hiccuped. Was that gold bullion on the porch?"  
  
Tom did smile then. "Yes. We could swing by their school a little later and help conceal what else the hiccuped produced."  
  
"Good idea." Carl chuckled. "I'd hate to see the news crews try to explain that Lear Jet."  
  
Tom bit his lip, humor dropping away despite himself. "I don't like it."  
  
Carl reached over and put and arm around his waist. "They're at the height of their power. Remember, white hole. It's a really good sign, a start like that."  
  
Tom leaned into Carl's shoulder, looking out the window, in the direction Kit and Nita had gone, Fred bobbing along behind them. "I still don't like it. I knew what we were getting into when we wanted to be Advisories, and I am very happy to let younger wizards take the dangerous things." He wrapped his own arm around Carl. He had one, very solid reason not to get into dangerous situations anymore, and he was standing next to him. "But seeing kids like that, so new to this, I don't like it. Sometimes I feel like I'm sending kids out into too much." He couldn't finish. Carl held him tighter.  
  
"It's about the Book, isn't it?"  
  
Tom nodded. "I would breath a lot easier if their Ordeal was only about a white hole named Fred who swallowed a space pen. But add the fact that the Book is missing? I feel like there is something we're missing. We should tell the other Advisories." He squeezed Carl.  
  
"They'll come back. Our kids always do. I think there is something special about those two. We need more young wizards like them. If anything, they'll make it back purely because they've got worrywarts like you watching out for them!" Carl replied.   
  
Tom grinned, reassured. Carl was right. He tightened the hug and held on for a few minutes more than necessary, because he could, and then turned to their next problem. "So, what do we do with our new-found wealth?"  
  
Carl pulled away and smiled down at the six sapphires lying on the floor. "Well," he walked over to them, picked one up and passed it from hand to hand. "While we can't keep them—though have I mentioned how much I would love a problem like Fred's?—we could make a few charitable donations around the city. A little at a time?"  
  
"There are a few places that I can think of to donate to right off the bat." Tom agreed. "But I think maybe we should make one concession to the fish."  
  
"The fi-" Carl's face lit up in amusement. "Oh, I see."  
  
They'd been forced to move the koi pond a few weeks ago, to make room for some new lawn features. The fish hadn't been pleased.  
  
"Shall I go deliver our peace offering?" Carl asked.  
  
"Sure, I'll go count the gold." Tom replied. "Avoiding the urge to laugh like a pirate."  
  
"You could do a few laughs. I mean, it's practically obligatory for that much gold." Carl winked, and then headed for the door. Tom followed.  
  
He was a quarter way through counting the gold (it was a lot of gold - and it was heavy), when he heard Carl talking to the fish. "Do you like the pretty, expensive ball of stone? Cause I'm willing to give it to you now, but if you don't want it..."  
  
There was a chorus of cheers, and a plop sound in the water.  
  
Carl yelled out. "They like it! Just don't eat it guys, cause I'm not even sure it'll fit in your stomachs."  
  
There came a sound of disappointed bubbling.

* * *

Carl stumbled into the house, Annie dogging (no pun intended) at his heels, ignoring the leash still attached to her neck and much more interested in the grocery bag he was holding at the highest point he could. "Annie, down. Sweetie, no. The bacon is not for you—okay, not yet. Heel!" Annie, doggie grin as wide as could be, made one last attempt at the bag, and then nearly tripped herself with the leash, now tangled around her limbs. Carl grinned. "Told you so." He teased, and then went quickly to the kitchen to place the bag on the counter that was highest out of Annie's reach, only to have Peach fly over and attack the carton of large brown eggs he'd bought.  
  
Rather, Peach grabbed one edge of the carton, and Carl swiftly grabbed the other end, a tug of war commenced. At least, until Peach let go. Carl watched in momentary horror as over a dozen brown ovals rose into the air, and then dropped to the floor with loud splatters. Peach went with them, but only to start slurping enough of the eggs as she could. Some of the other eggs trajectory, however, brought them crashing down on Carl, covering the Advisory in raw eggs.  
  
"Peach! Stop! That's—You little cannibal!" Carl yelled, swatting Peach's beak, which was covered in raw egg. The macaw flew to the opposite end of the room, where her perch stood.  
"I need the protein! I'm a growing girl!" Came the unrepentant, indignant squawk. "An egg a day keeps the Doctor away!"  
  
"That's apples you crazy bird." Carl grumbled, looking down at himself, feeling some of the raw egg white slip down the back of his neck, and down his back, over his spine. He shuddered, and then snapped. "I needed those."  
  
"No you didn't."  
  
Carl stuck his tongue out. He had been planning to make a quiche, but unless he felt like going back to the store, it wasn't going to happen. It would, however, be easier than fighting with an insane parrot. Peach ruffled her feathers and ignored him, searching for egg amidst her feathers. Carl left her to it. If she wanted to be a cannibal, that was her choice.  
  
Carl managed to put the rest of the groceries (and gave into the puppy face Annie had been giving him) without incident, and then decided that it was very definitely time for a shower, and then he'd clean the kitchen before Tom came home. Out of the two of them, Tom was definitely the neat freak.   
  
There were, admittedly, places that the egg had gotten, he discovered in the shower, that Carl wasn't entirely convinced that they hadn't gotten there through wizardry. Help them all if Peach could actually cast spells. The shower though, was lovely, and hot. Carl stepped out of the shower, wrapped a towel around his waist, drying his hair with another that eventually ended up being draped across his shoulders. He was about to go look for his notes when a call from another person's mind hit his like a ton of bricks. It was Nita Callahan's voice, and she sounded extremely upset.   
  
Carl froze and listened intently.  _I've gone as far as I can on my own._  Carl realized that she wasn't sending the thought consciously, but her power was broadcasting the thought for her. He was about to question why it would do so, when Nita thought again, answering his question.  _I need advice! Oh, Tom, where are you?_  Carl felt his pulse quicken slightly. Ever since Nita Callahan and Kit Rodriguez had walked through the hedge border of his and Tom's house while on their Ordeal, they had become friendly, frequently stopping by for advice, with questions, or just to say hello. Tom was the one the kids usually came to for advice.   
  
He was more open, more creative with his advice, and was able to wrap his mind around problems and apply them to the people involved much easier than it was for Carl, probably because he was a writer. Carl was better at anything that involved mechanics - like the World Gates, or complicated spell diagrams. But Tom was currently unavailable, and Carl wasn't sure if Nita's Call had reached Tom at all. There was also the chance that Nita was unconsciously (aided by wizardry) reaching out for an Advisory, and if Tom wasn't available, well, Carl was an Advisory too.   
  
But Nita had sounded extremely upset. Something told Carl that he couldn't wait for Tom, and made a choice, closed his eyes, and concentrated on Kit's brand name "beam me up Scotty" spell.  
  
He didn't remember that all he had on was a pair of towels.   
  
Within seconds, he was standing in the warm air of the beach where Mr. and Mrs. Callahan had decided to take their kids, and Kit, on vacation. He spotted Nita sitting in the sand not very far away, staring at him a little, and for good reason. His haste had meant that his arrival had been loud, and sand had flown in every direction, causing a slight crater. Nita's eyes were wide, and Carl realized that she'd probably expected to see Tom, if she had expected anyone to pop into existence at all. He then realized that he could feel sunlight on his bare chest and sand between his toes, remembered his...state of undress...and promptly ignored it, hurrying over to Nita, worry overriding everything else. "What'samatter Nita?" He asked, concerned. "I heard that even though it wasn't meant for me."  
  
The tiny, wary, and weak attempt at a smile she tried to give him did nothing to make Carl less concerned. "Uh, no. Look," she said. "No one was answering the phone - and then I was just thinking-"  
  
Carl shook his head. "That wasn't what I would call 'just' thinking," he said, sitting down in the sand with her and adjusted his towel as he did so.   
  
Nita looked at him, and then she started to look guilty. "I got you out of the shower, I'm sorry."  
  
"No, I was out already." Carl reassured her. "It's ok."  
  
"Where's Tom?" Nita asked tentatively.   
  
Carl assumed she didn't want to offend him with the question, but it had been Tom, not him, that she was trying to reach. He wasn't all put out about it. "Tom had a breakfast meeting with some people from the ABC network, and asked me to take his calls." He smiled. "Not that I had much choice in your case..." She didn't smile, and he became serious again. "You've got big trouble, huh? Tell me about it."   
  
She did. It took a while, and with each significant occurrence, Carl felt his stomach start to clench. Most wizards living on the East Coast of the United States had heard of the Song, or at least read about it. Since it had to be renewed every so often, it sometimes got used as reference material in the Manual for other, big, renewable spells. He knew at least some of what entailed, and who the Singers were. It wasn't until Nita told him that she had accepted the part of the Silent Lord, that Carl felt a twinge of fear - and a great deal of shock. It was the same fear, he supposed, that Tom had initially felt when the kids had told them about the  _Book of Night With Moon_  going missing when they were on Ordeal. He knew Tom had been more afraid for them than he had at the time, but they were out of Ordeal, and Nita was in the most fateful part of the dangerous Song. Carl felt the sudden protective urge that a mother must feel for her kids. He wanted to take Nita far, far away from the ocean, to another galaxy if he could, to find a loop-hole, to get her out of the Song. But he shoved it to the back of his mind.   
  
Still, the shock must have shown on his face because Nita started crying, but she managed to finish her story. He fought the urge to hug her, and it felt so callous to do so. He probably would have been less adverse had he been more properly dressed, but something told him not to. Hugging wouldn't help her, as comforting as it might have been, not with this. Mr. or Mrs. Callahan should be the ones doing so, on no. Nita's folks - who probably didn't know about wizardry, let alone that their daughter was slated to die for salvation for the coast. "Do your folks know?" he said at last.  
  
"No." Nita said quietly, and Carl felt his stomach drop. "And I don't think I'm going to tell them." Carl's stomach now clenched. "I think Dad suspects," she said shakily. "And Mom knows he does and doesn't want to talk about it." Carl cursed mentally. How did the Powers expect this to turn out well? What advice could he possibly give her? How to you tell a child how to tell her parents that in a few days-she would probably be dead, and there was nothing they could do?   
  
"I don't know what to tell you." He said softly.   
  
Nita seemed to break down. "Carl," she said, tears making her voice thick. "What can I do? I can't - I can't just die!" She started shaking and crying, and Carl found himself fighting to keep his own tears back. He didn't want to lose Nita. Even as he was on the verge of tears, the cold, rational part of his wizard brain, spoke before he could stop it. "Well yeah, you can." He said at last, gently, trying to appear calm, though he felt anything but. "People do it all the time - sometimes for much less cause." As if that was a decent excuse for the loss of such a young life. Even if it was true, he felt like a bastard.  
  
"But there must be something I could do!" Nita said desperately. Carl could feel his heart breaking.  
  
He looked down at the sand, because he didn't want to meet her eyes. "What did you say you were going to do?" He asked her.   
  
Nita didn't say anything. From the moment she'd taken the Oath, binding her to the role of the Silent Lord for the Song, she'd given her word to go through with it. In wizardry, that was something you never broke - at least not without severe consequences. An earthquake and tidal wave were large consequences. People would die if she didn't do it, and she would die if she did.   
  
Something occurred to him. "You know what caused this?" he said.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Remember that blank-check wizardry you did while in the alternate Manhattan, during your Ordeal? That open-ended request for help?" It was a guess, a simple conjecture on Carl's part, but a good one.   
  
"Uh-huh."  
  
"That kind of spell always says that at some later date you'll be called upon to return the energy you've used." Carl was somber. "You got your help, but it must have taken a lot of energy to seal a whole piece of another space away from every other space, forever..."  
  
Nita didn't like his line of thinking, Carl could tell. She rubbed at her eyes. "But the spell never said anyone was going to have to die to pay back the price!"  
  
"No." Carl replied. "All it said was that you were going to have to pay back the exact amount of energy used up at some future date. And it must have been a very great amount, to require a lifeprice. There is is no higher payment that can me made." He fell silent for a moment, and then whispered. "Well, one." He felt his face shut down, trying to keep himself from crying. It was much too high a price, and his mind shied away from the memories.   
  
Nita had put her head on his knees, was watching him. "Carl, there has to be something you, we could do-"  
  
There was silence between them for a while, as Carl warred with what he could say. "Nita," Carl said finally. "No. What you absolutely do not want is 'something you could do'. What you want is for me to get you off the hook, so that you don't have to  _fulfill_ the promise you made." It sounded harsh, and it was.  
  
Her head snapped up to stare at him in shock, and there was hurt in those brown eyes. "You mean - Carl, you don't care if I die or not?" Her voice trembled.   
  
He felt like a monster. "I care a whole lot." Carl said roughly, his own voice thick now, pressure in his throat. "But unfortunately, I also have to tell you the truth. That's what Seniors are for; why do you think we have so much power to work with? We are 'paid' for what we do - and a lot of it isn't pleasant."  
  
"Then tell me some truth!" Nita was almost screaming at him. "Tell me what to do!"  
  
"No." Carl said gently, delicately trying to ease her. "Never that. Nine tenths of the power wizardry comes from is making up your mind about what you want to do. It's determination. The rest of it is just mechanics." She seemed to understand because, after all, she had probably felt it before. "What I can do is go over your options with you."   
  
Nita nodded, a tear running down one cheek.  
  
He told her her options. The first, that she could stay out of the water for a few days, through the Song, and not be part of it. The consequences would be just as bad as death, because the Powers never forgot a broken promise. She would lose wizardry, and she would lose her memory of it, and of him, and Carl, and Kit. The Song would go wrong, and many would die, the Lone Power would win. And she would never forget that the Universe would die sooner because of her, even as she lost her magic, and remembrance of magic.   
  
He told her the second option, where she could go through with the Song, and be eaten, letting millions live, though her friends and family would have to live with the grief. The Lone Power would be delivered another setback.   
  
And he told her about the third option, to do the Song willingly, to die willingly, to keep terrible things from happening.   
  
"Does it make a difference?" Nita asked.   
  
Carl nodded. "If you can make the Sacrifice willingly, the wizardry will gain such power. Nothing undermines the Lone Power's workings faster than power turned toward having something be the way someone else wants it. If you make the Sacrifice, trying to keep those you love alive, the power will be turned to good." He looked hard at her. "I have to make real sure you understand this. It's not being a martyr, with the desire to make someone feel guilty or sad hidden at the bottom of it. That would sabotage the wizardry just as much as running out on the Song would. But if you willingly gave up your life for the sake of the joy and well-being of others, it will instantly destroy whatever power the Lone One has amassed." He looked away from her. "That doesn't mean you can't be afraid to do it, it will still work, fear or no fear."  
  
"Great," Nita said, and then laughed nervously.  
  
"When the Sacrifice has been made willingly, there have been fewer wars afterwards, less crime, for a long time. The Death of things, the world as a whole, has been slowed..." Carl trailed off, imagining it.   
  
"I don't know if I could do that," Nita said, scarcely above a whisper, almost too quiet for him to hear.   
  
There was a long pause, and Carl felt the hand that had been holding one of the towels slacken. "I don't know if I could either," he said just as quietly.   
  
They sat still for a long time.   
  
"I think-" Nita began.   
  
"Don't say it." Carl interrupted her. You couldn't have possibly have decided on what to do already." He hoped she hadn't, this was something...something to think over very, very well. "And even if you have-" He looked away from her again. "You may change your mind later... and then you'll be saved the embarrassment of justifying it to me."  _Though not in this lifetime_ , he mind cruelly supplied.  
  
"Later?" Nita looked at him in confusion. "If i don't do it, I won't know you! And if I do do it-"  
  
"There's always Timeheart," he said softly, sadly.   
  
Nita nodded silently. Timeheart was the place that only wizards can find their way to while still alive, a beautiful, yet terrible place where things that are loved are preserved, deathless, perfect, yet still growing, and becoming more themselves through moment after timeless moment. "After we- After we're alive, then-"  
  
"What's loved, lives." Carl said gently, and in his mind, he could see that place, the people he knew there.   
  
Nita had this look of wondrous realization on her face. "You're a Senior. You must go there all the time."  
  
"No," Carl said, looking out over the ocean, still thinking of somewhere else. "In fact, the higher you're promoted, the more work you have, and the less time you get to spend outside this world." He breathed out and shook his head, a little bit of wistfulness in his heart. "I haven't been to Timeheart for a long time, except in dreams." The wistfulness had carried into his voice, and though she was upset herself, she thumped him on his shoulder once or twice, hesitantly in an attempt to cheer him up.  
  
"Yeah." He said, then noticed that the sun had moved in the sky slightly. It was time to go, even if he didn't want to leave her there, alone on the sand. He stood up slowly, brushing the sand that he could from the white towel tucked around his waist, and then looked back at Nita. "Nita." He said, and his voice broke. "I'm sorry." He said, he felt like he was trying to apologize for his being unable to save her, for sending her like a lamb to slaughter. He wanted to apologize for the unfairness of the universe.  
  
"Yeah." She replied quietly.   
  
"Call us before you start the Song, if you can, OK?" His voice had gone raspy, he was trying to hold himself together now. There was pain in his chest so sharp that he thought he was going to burst.  
  
"Right." Nita said.   
  
Carl turned away, preparing himself to go, then something told him to turn back, and he looked at Nita. She was so small. And then she was running to him, arms outstretched and crying. Nita threw her arms around his waist, her face in his stomach. "Oh honey." Carl said, and his voice broke. He dropped to one knee, and held her tight, as tight as he could without crushing her. This could be the last time he would ever do so, and he didn't want to let go. There were tears running his cheeks. He felt so helpless.   
  
After a while, she pushed him away. Carl didn't want to let her go, but released her, after a moment. "Nita," he said. "If you - if you do..." He paused, trying to form the words. It was so hard. "Thank you." He said finally, looking at her hard. He wanted to memorize her, just like this. "Thank you. For the million lives that'll keep on living. They'll never know. But the wizards will...and they will never forget. The whales will sing of you."  
  
"A lot of good that'd do me!" Nita said, caught between desperate laughter and tears, slightly hysterical.   
  
"Sweetheart," Carl said, "if you're in this world for comfort, you've come to the wrong place. And if you're doing what you're doing because because of the way other people will feel about it - you're doing because of the way other people will feel about it - you're _definitely_  in the wrong business. What you have to do has to be done because of how you'll feel about you...like how you did it last night with your folks." His voice was rueful. "There are no other rewards, if only because no matter what you do, or think or say, no one will ever think the things about you that you want them to think. Not even the Powers."  
  
Nita looked at him for a moment, her eyes grazing his face, looking for something, what he didn't know. Her face, tear-stained, red with crying, suddenly shifted. Nita seemed to gain this odd sense of calm. Her face reflected it.   
  
It was the moment he would think of later, though he wouldn't realize it, not until much later, that he would realize that Nita had accepted what was going to happen to her. He hugged her again, just once, and they let go of one another. Carl turned and walked away quickly. He didn't want her to see him cry. If he turned back now, he would never leave. He thought of the spell, quickly, the air slammed itself shut behind him, and he was back in his own kitchen, in a sandy towel, his mind still focused on the teenager he'd left in the sand.   
  
"Hey handsome." Tom's voice sounded from behind him, incredibly cheerful. Too cheerful for Carl. "Where have you been, and is the towel optional?"  
  
Carl turned around. Tom had probably just walked in from his business meeting, his black suit gripping him in all of the right places. Any other time, Carl thought, the flirting would have lead to something more interesting. But Tom looked at Carl's face, and the smile dropped from his lips.   
  
"Carl?" Tom stepped closer, concern in his voice.  
  
Suddenly, Carl found that he couldn't speak, couldn't form the words that he needed to. There was a lump in his throat the size of the Mariana Trench. He gulped, once, twice, and then spoke, barely managing to get the words out. "I think you need to sit down Tom." His voice was stronger, calmer, than he thought he was internally.  
  
He could see the effect that it had on Tom, the look on his face became deadpan, closed, as if he knew bad news was coming. "What-" He didn't sit.  
  
"Nita took the part of the Silent One in the Song" Carl said, his voice getting stronger, though he didn't know how. "The Silent One, Tom, the Silent One has to make a sacrifice to stop the Lone Power."  
  
Tom's forehead scrunched up, lines formed in his forehead. "You mean a ceremonial sacrifice? Something that stands for a real-" His voice had lifted, and Carl realized he didn't understand.   
  
"No. Tom, it's," Carl gulped. He didn't want to tell Tom this, not about one of the kids he cared for. "It's a life price, Tom. A real sacrifice."  
  
Tom started at him for a moment, not moving, not even breathing. His eyes had gone wide. He breathed in once, blinked. "What?" Tom's voice was steeped in shock. "What- No." He shook his head. "No. Peach warned her, Nita should have considered all the angles. She-"  
  
"She didn't read the fine print Tom." Carl's voice broke, and he could feel the tears coming back. "She has to  _fulfill_ the part. She, she's probably going to..." And he couldn't say it.   
  
Tom was shaking his head, trying to disbelieve it. "No."   
  
Carl broke down, he felt his knees give way, and he sank to the linoleum, the towel slipped off, and he wasn't in any mood to care. His head was buried in his hands, and for all that he was a Senior, and a wizard, with all the experience with death and sacrifice that both had given him, Carl sobbed.   
  
He stayed there, with Tom, who, despite the suit, had crashed to the floor with him. They remained holding each other, kneeling together in the sand from Carl's towel, until they'd cried themselves out.   
  
When Kit came back from the vacation, dragging Nita -  _Nita_  - through the hedges, a few days later, neither Tom nor Carl would let them speak for the first few minutes. They were too busy hugging the daylights out of them.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom and Carl watching and mentoring Nita and Kit through So You Want To Be A Wizard, Deep Wizardry, Wizards at War, and the day the kids go off to college.

Tom sat at the kitchen table holding Carl's hand, staring forward at nothing at all. Carl was staring just as emptily at the wood grain. Neither had spoken in some time.   
  
It wasn't as if they hadn't known the was wasn't coming, They'd known. It was hard to miss the increase of activity, and even those who didn't know about wizardry now knew about dark matter. But losing their wizardry...even their knowledge of wizardry...  
  
Tom stroked Carl's hand with a thumb, taking comfort in the other man's presence. They'd been together as partners in wizardry for a long time, and together as lovers for almost the same amount of time. Wizardry was at the core of their lives, and soon, that core would be just...gone. As if it have never existed. A part of him was afraid that if it was gone, Carl would leave him too.  
  
What was happening to their bodies, to their powers, itwas as if someone had pulled a metaphorical plug in their bodies, and their magic was leaking out, draining, and only stopping the spread of the war, of the dark matter, would send it rushing back.   
  
It was like dying, but worse, because they would be alive at the end, but completely unaware of all they'd lost.   
  
Carl squeezed Tom's hand tightly, and for a moment, Tom thought he might have been thinking the same thing, then let go, leaned over and rubbed the hand through Tom's short hair. "I swear that you hair is grayer than it was two days ago," he said gently, a sad sort of fondness in his voice.   
  
Tom chuckled a little and held his head closer to Tom, revelling in the touch. "It's all that entropy finally catching up with me. It seems that wizardry slows the effect in us wizards too, so I haven't had to use hair dye, at least till now."  
  
"You still look handsome."

Tom watched Carl's face. "You've changed too." There were more lines on Carl's face, and they made him more distinguished. He touched the lines gingerly. "You're more rugged, more intense than you were a couple of days ago. It suits you."   
  
They smiled at each other, and then Carl winced. "I feel older."  
  
"You're shorter too." Tom told him, Carl looked panicked for a moment.   
  
"I what?!" He looked down at himself and breathed in slowly. "I'll check later." He sounded nervous, to Tom's ears.  
  
Tom closed his eyes, sighed, and then looked towards their wall clock. "We should go. Nita and Kit - they should know what's going to happen, what their duties will be, from here on out."  
  
"Want to pop over?" Carl suggested.   
  
"Nah." Tom shook his head. "We can't. The less wizardry we use, the longer we'll last."  
  
Carl bit his lip. "It's strange. After a lifetime of of fighting entropy, we now have to let it flow. I don't know how I'm going to get used to this. If I'm going to get used to this."  
  
They didn't call first, they never had before, so they didn't see why they should now. It still felt odd to use the car to go to the Callahan's home, instead of walking. Nita and Kit obviously thought it was odd too, they could see it in the kids faces when they pulled up to the door. Even so, they greeted both Tom and Carl normally, as if they hadn't noticed the changes to the both of them. Filif was with them on the steps.   
  
"Hey you three." Tom said.  
  
"Filif?" Carl asked. "Berries all in one place?" Filif rustled his answer, and then Carl turned to Nita. "Can we go in? I know it's sudden, but we have a lot of ground to cover."  
  
"Yeah." Nita said. "Come on in." She gestured to the to.   
  
Sker'ret and Roshaun greeted them as they came into the kitchen as well, and Tom related the greetings of Sker'ret's family to him, while Carl took a look at Roshaun, who was staring back skeptically. Carl wasn't sure he liked that. At least, the kid bore that expression until Carl opened his mouth, and was a little more than smug when Roshaun muttered. "Now those are  _Seniors_. I was wondering if your people had any worthy of the name."  
  
A brief, warm, glow settled in both Tom and Carl's stomachs as they heard Nita defend the honor of her planet, and of course, them. "You have no idea."   
  
When they were all seated, Tom started talking. "Normally, we'd spend a lot more time being social, getting to know everyone, but today's not the day for it, so please forgive us if we get right to the point."  _Because we're running out of time._  He let out a long breath, his hand itching to take Carl's, and tried to focus on the beginnings of confusion on the kid's faces. "Some of you will have noticed that the world - worlds have been getting...well, a lot more complicated lately, and seemingly, a lot worse."  
  
"Yeah." Nita said, and while there was some sadness in her tone, Tom knew she really had no idea, what Seniors all across the globe had been hiding from those younger than them.  
  
"By lately," Tom said a touch more sharply than he had intended. "I mean over the past couple of thousand years."   
  
Nita's face fell. "Oh."   
  
"It isn't local." Tom said. "Matters have been worsening gradually over all the worlds. The Powers That Be haven't had much to say except that this worsening is a sign of huge change coming. Something that's not been seen before in the worlds. And now we know the change is upon us...because the expansion universe is speeding up."  
  
Kit looked very confused. "But hasn't the universe always been expanding? What's the problem with that?"  
  
"Bear with me." Tom said patiently, and then looked to Nita. "Do you know anything about dark matter?"  
  
"Mostly that it's missing." Nita said slowly, thoughtfully. "Astronomers have been looking for it for a long time, about a hundred years or so. But now they've started to find it. All over the place."  
  
"And so have scientists on a lot of other worlds." Carl said. "Know what's strange about that?"   
  
"That it took so long?" Kit guessed.  
  
Carl shook his head. "No, that all sentient species who were looking for it, all started finding dark matter at around the same time."  
  
"The discovery of dark matter and the increase in the speed of the universe's expansion are somehow connected." Tom told them. "Dark matter is being detected in ever increasing masses and volumes, as if it was appearing out of no where. There is no explanation for it. And in all the places where "new" dark matter is being found, local space is starting to expand much faster than it should,  _thousands_  of times faster."  
  
"So everything is getting farther and farther away from everything else." Kit responded, trying to get a handle on the concept.   
  
"Right, now, that's bad enough by itself. But there are also other side effects to this kind of abnormal expansion." Tom paused a moment before continuing, now wishing he could feel Carl's body wrapped around his for comfort. "Mental ones, and effects that go deeper than the merely mental."  
  
The kids, even those from other planets looked unsettled.   
  
"The expansion isn't just affecting space itself," Carl continued. "It also stretches the thin structure that space is hung on - the subdimensions, the realms of hyperstrings and so on. If the expansion isn't slowed to it's normal rate, physical laws are going to start misbehaving. And since those laws are the basis on which life and thought work, people here and everywhere in the universe are going to start being affected personally by the greatly increased expansion."   
  
Tom couldn't look at him, but looked at Filif, who asked how this would happen. "It's going to vary from species to species. In our case, the case of Senior Wizards - and I don't mean Seniors, but everyone pretty much past latency - basically adolescence - it's going to look like a slowly increasing physical and then mental weariness. We're going to start becoming apathetic, start to find it hard to care, even hard to believe in what we're all doing." He gulped, this was the hardest part. "And then, our wizardry will vanish."  
  
Nita looked at him, and Tom nodded. "Yes. It's already begun." Carl's hand squeezed his knee under the table and Tom let out another long breath. "Normally, this is something we'd derail, or at least try. Most Seniors and Advisory level wizards from this part of the galaxy were involved this past week with an intervention that was meant to deal with the problem, at least in the short term for our galaxy."   
  
"So that's what you were doing." Nita said. "That's where you were when nobody could get through to you, even with the manuals."   
  
Carl nodded. "None of us were sure when the necessary forces could be completely assembled. When the call finally came, we had to drop everything and go. There was no time to explain."  
  
"Or for interruptions." Tom said. "To say we were busy would be putting it mildly...not that it made any difference, in the end. Because we failed. After we were sure we couldn't slow the expansion down, we were all sent back to our homeworlds, to start organizing their defense."   
  
"Why now?" Kit asked, sitting up straighter. "Why is this all happening now?"  
  
"Not even the Powers are sure," Carl told him. "Someone's going to have to find out, though...because the "why" may be the key to solving the problem. If it can be solved." He finished darkly.   
  
Kit looked wholly uneasy. "But, if you guys are going to lose your wizardry for a while, who's going to be running the planet?"  
  
Tom and Carl looked at each other, seeing the unwillingness to place this burden on the kids in each other's faces. But it had to be done. They looked back to Nita and Kit. "You are." They said in tandem.  
  
To say that the kids took it well was a complete misdirection. Kit's face had gone white, and his response, "You're kidding, right?" basically summed it up nicely. The pleading in Kit's voice shook Tom.   
  
Tom showed them, using his manual, the extent of the problem, how it started, the speedup of expansion after the intervention. How wizardry would fail because of it. "That would be bad enough," he said, "but matters get even worse. The changes in the structure of space then start affecting the thought processes and reactions of all living beings int he area. Their behavior will start to become less and less rational, less committed to Life itself. This is the point where a wizard whose power levels are below a certain level starts losing the ability to speak or understand the Speech. Because you stop believing that you can. Soon you start believing  _in_  it."  
  
"Wizardry will not live in the unwilling heart," Sker'ret quoted.   
  
"Yes." Tom agreed. "And nonwizards will suffer too. They will find that matters of the heart and spirit will be valued less. And then they will get scared, and angry, and turn to violence because it will be the only thing that will remind people what it feel like to be alive."  
  
The kids were silent for a while, they all were, then asked a few more questions, until Tom picked up his manual, making it vanish. "Anyway. Right now, we need to stop the dark matter from tearing the universe apart - or at lease slow down its growth and buy us some time to solve the problem."  
  
"To buy you time to solve it." Carl said. "Wizards near latency, at their peak power, are the only ones who will keep their powers long enough to make a difference now."  
  
The kids were preturbed. Dairine swallowed hard, Nita raised her eyebrows, Sker'ret pulled into himself a little, as if for protection, and Filif was stock still. Roshaun stared down at the table, trying to appear stoic.   
  
Tom felt himself smile. There was a bright side in this for them, at least. "Now after that, believe it or not, there is some good news." He was suddenly amused by the skeptical look on Nita's face. "For the duration, for as long as there is a duration, as far as wizardry goes, the lid is off. Any wizardry you can fuel, that might stop the problem, is fair game." He shook his head. "If we don't save the universe, then not just wizardry, but the Life we're sworn to protect, is at an end."  
  
They left after Spot went all "oracle" on the kids. It was almost like having Peach around again, except with a keyboard rather than multicolored feathers. (They still hadn't  _quite_  gotten over the fact Peach had actually been one of the  _Powers_ in hiding. Carl had worried for months that the Champion was going to smite him back for all the slaps to Peach's beak).   
  
When they got home,Carl leaned gently on the side of the car and closed his eyes for a moment. "That went... well."  
  
"As well as can be." Tom replied, putting a hand on his partner's back. "As much as I don't want to accept it, it's in their hands now, and any kid across this section of the galaxy."  
  
Carl lifted away and hugged Tom tightly, and Tom was startled to feel tears on his neck, from Carl. "Do you think they can do it?" Carl whispered, and it was a desperate question.  
  
Tom held Carl, the love of his life, as tight as he could. "They have to."  _Please fix this._  He mentally whispered to the children, not that it would probably reach them.  _I don't want to lose Carl._ "You're tired, aren't you?"  
  
Carl nodded, mute, and Tom held him tighter.  
  
It came in stages, like most degenerative diseases. As their wizardry was leeched away, they grew more tired in both mind and body. They started feeling their ages. Tom kept graying, Carl got a few centimeters shorter. At times, the words coming out of their separate mouths seemed, strange, foreign. Carl tried to keep knowledge, writing it down, memorizing, videotaping himself, talking about wizardry. He wasn't ready to forget. Neither of them were.Tom videotaped too, talking about how they met, how they became partners in both senses, about Nita and Kit and Dairine, about physics and slowing entropy, about Peach and traveling to other worlds, and memorizing Carl, as the wizard he was, both in name, and in body.  
  
Until the day when Tom read the words taped to the fridge, a funny little Oath like piece that started with "In Life's name and for Life's sake", snorted in amusement because, honestly,  _wizardry_?, and tossed it in the garbage. He'd told Carl that wizardry was just a child's dream.   
  
They were mundane people living in a mundane world, living with a sense that they'd lost something, and didn't know what it was. They fought more, because of it. And yet, there were times they would just stop fighting, and look at each other as something they didn't recognize, some memory they couldn't capture flashed through their minds. Often they would cease the argument, and sometimes, they would comfort each other, often in...intimate ways. There was a feeling that whatever they had lost, they had been happier then.  
  
And then, one morning, Tom woke with the words of the Wizard's Oath streaming through his mind. He woke Carl with a blistering, searing kiss, and then threw back his head and laughed, tears of joy streaming down his face, his memories, his knowledge, his  _wizardry_  flooding through his veins, strumming in his bones, and filling his mind again with wonder.   
  
Carl was stunned, and then threw off the covers of the bed, tackled Tom, kissed him until neither were able to breath, and then ran through the house, his normal, stoic demeanor dropped completely as he wept happily, yelling the Wizard's Oath as if the entire universe could hear him. Wizardry fizzed down his spine, lit his neurons, sparked in his brain, filling his mind with the world as he was meant to know it.   
  
The same day, when their doorbell rang, and they both went to answer, it Tom's heart leapt when it was Nita and Kit he saw standing there. When Nita tentatively said "hi", even though he'd known her for years, he found that he couldn't speak. They'd done it, they'd saved the universe - and them. Both kids looked exhausted, a little older than Tom could remember, but so wonderful at the same time. Whatever they have done, whatever they had lost or gained, wherever they had been, it had hammered them, tempered them a little more than they had been already. Future Seniors in the making. When he finally did open his mouth, it was to say the first thing that he was so relieved to be able to say, and to mean it, and it had to have been the same for Carl.   
  
"We are on Errantry...and boy, do we ever greet you." Tom said, and, in the split second before Nita tackled him, was relieved that his voice had not broken.

* * *

August Twentieth, the date that Tom and Carl had been dreading for months had finally and undeniably arrived. The day that Nita and Kit would head off for their first year of college, far from New York. They had both applied and been accepted to Boston University, a four hours away. It was a milestone, and the kids would be leaving home for the first time. Well, the first time for an extended period. Alternate universes and distant planets notwithstanding, it was going to be an entirely new experience, for the both of them. College was a whole 'nother ball game.  
  
It would also be the first time that they would be more permanently away from Tom and Carl. To be honest, it was affecting them a lot more than they had anticipated. They'd watched these kids grow up, and to see them go...  
  
Carl watched Tom wander about the kitchen, shirtless as he tried to get breakfast together and Tom put the finishing touches on the care packages that they'd prepared for both of the kids. Some of the stuff in the two packages was essentially the same, but Tom had gone to great lengths to personalize them, Carl adding his own little things in too. The care packages had been in the planning for at least two months. Tom had thought of it, and Carl had started assembling little odds and ends, and it had skyrocketed from there.  
  
"I'm still amazed that we got all of this in here." Tom said from the kitchen table, tweaking wrapping and using a pair of scissors to curl some bright blue ribbon.  
  
Carl snorted. "We couldn't have, if we hadn't used that 'It's bigger on the inside' spell. I felt like I was building a pocket universe the size of a shoebox. I still say we should have just built them the wizardly equivalent of Doctor Who's TARDIS."  
  
"Which we would have then stolen, and used ourselves." Tom replied. "Don't lie, I know you."  
  
"Well yeah." Carl replied, buttering toast and totally unrepentant. "Or, at the very least, we could have built a second one too."  
  
The sound of scissors sliding together came from the table, and Tom stepped back to admire his handiwork. "All done. And if I say so myself, they look great."  
  
Carl sneaked a peek, putting the last slice of toast down. Kit's present was wrapped in shiny red paper and tied neatly with blue ribbon, while Nita's was light blue and also tied with the blue ribbon. Both were shoebox size, though on the inside, each could store over one hundred pounds of stuff, and remain feather light. The boxes themselves were from a large container store chain, and had been ridiculously easy to modify. It was great when working with an object that, once you explained that you just wanted to help it store  _more_  stuff, was extremely eager. They looked perfect. Not a ribbon out of place, and wrapped so delicately, so carefully, that they could have been wrapped by one of the Stepford Wives. Carl smirked at the thought. "Beautiful honey, just don't go all Martha Stewart on me."  
  
Tom rolled his eyes. "Come on, like you don't want them to be just perfect for those two." He grinned. "Hey Emril, the eggs are burning."  
  
"Shit!" Carl swore, swooped towards the eggs, to see that they were just fine. "Funny Tom. Real funny."  
  
Tom flashed a smile containing all of his pearly whites. "You're welcome." He picked the gifts up and set them aside, only to pick up two different cards and envelopes. "Want to do a separate message on these, or a joint one?" He asked.  
  
"Separate." Carl said, flipping the eggs. "It'll be from the both of us anyway."  
  
Tom nodded absently, the end of a pen in his mouth as he thought. Quiet filled the kitchen for a while, broken only by the sound of sizzling consumables on the stove. And then Tom sighed. "Carl, this is going to sound strange, but I don't know what to put."  
  
"The creative writer doesn't know what to write in a card?"  
  
"I know what I want to say!" Tom protested, flicking a semi-annoyed look at his partner. "But it all comes out so...parental. I'm not either one of their fathers."  
  
Carl blinked, and then grinned. "You mean, don't take drugs, don't get arrested, don't do any underage drinking, don't battle the Lone Power without letting us know first?"  
  
"Stop making it sound like I'm being silly." Tom mock complained. "I want them to be careful, both at school, and outside of it. They'll be facing different problems, maybe different wizardries, and if they go on Errantry while they are there—and knowing those two, they will..."  
  
Carl shuffled over to the table with the toast, set the plate down, and then leaned over Tom, wrapping his arms about the other man's neck and shoulders, so that his head was next to Tom's. "Aw. Is someone feeling too paternal? Should we go kidnap them and say that they can't leave?"  
  
"You're not sad they're going?" Tom's voice rumbled as he asked incredulously.  
  
Carl squeezed Tom gently, and then let go, heading back over to put the scrambled eggs on their own plate. "Of course I am. I can't believe it's been that long, I mean, we're not even that old, and yet in that time, somehow, they grew up. But they do need to go."   
  
Tom sighed again and grabbed a piece of toast. "Can we use a piece of another Saturday to extend the day?" He said despondently between munches.  
  
"It's only seven thirty in the morning." Carl amused, reminded him, sliding into his own chair at the table.  
  
"Your point?" Tom smirked. "Pass the jam."  
  
When they got to Kit's house around eight thirty, there were two cars sitting outside the house, both stuffed to the brim with plastic boxes, textbooks and all sorts of stuff both kids would need when they got to school. Nita's stuff had a great deal more color variety that Kit's making it easy to pick out whose stuff was whose. Carl felt like the package he'd been walking with—Nita's- had gotten heavier just from the sight. They really were going. He looked at Tom, who was hugging Kit's box to himself unconsciously, watching the cars with a look of trepidation. It was Mrs. Rodriguez who spotted them first, puffing out of the house with what had to be a cooler of food for the kids—a little reminder of home. Kit would miss his mother's cooking, both men knew without a doubt. Dining Hall food was nothing compared to a mother's homemade.  
  
Mrs. Rodriguez set the cooler gently into the family car, puffed, and then looked up, spotted them, and smiled widely. Tom's mouth twitched in response, and then blossomed into a grin as Mrs. Rodriguez greeted them warmly, as if she hadn't seen them in years. "Tom, Carl! You came! Kit said you might drop by to say goodbye." She came bustling towards them, and her enthusiasm was catching. Carl felt his own trepidation slip from his stomach as he was kissed gently on the cheek. "I know how much you both mean to them, both Kit and Nita. I think they are just as nervous to leave you as they are us."  
  
Carl did smile then, a little sheepishly, taking one, tiny, look at Tom, who looked ever so slightly like he'd gone soft. "It's because we're their Seniors." Carl replied, pretending that that's all it was. "They've almost never really been without us."  _Except for when we forgot wizardry_ , his mind whispered tortuously,  _when we forgot who we were at the core_. He banished the thought immediately. Today, of all days, was not the time to be thinking of that.  
  
Mrs. Rodriguez shot him a knowing look and slapped him playfully on the arm, earning a chuckle from Tom. "Carl Romeo, you know those two adore the both of you. I wouldn't be surprised if they 'pop over' to see you before they come to see their folks!"  
  
"Then we'll send them packing off to you first." Tom agreed. "After all, they better not plan to use  _our_  laundry machine to do their loads."  
  
"Anyway, I haven't fixed it yet." Carl added, after Mrs. Rodriguez had laughed. "So, they'd be in trouble if they did."  
  
Mrs. Rodriguez shook her head. "Come on you too, I'll tell them you're here. Would you like some coffee?"  
  
"We just had some, but thank you." Tom replied for the both of them, though Mrs. Rodriguez would probably give them coffee anyway. They'd learned long ago that leaving the Rodriguez house unfed was fairly impossible. They followed her towards the house, still clutching the packages, sidestepping the luggage still to be set into the waiting cars.  
  
"I swear I don't remember taking nearly half this much to college when I went." Tom commented, shaking his head after they'd made it through the proverbial minefield.  
  
"Mmm." Carl agreed. "It's a little much..."  
  
Mrs. Rodriguez shook her head as well. "I wanted them to be comfortable there, but there was so much the school required. Extra-long bed sheets, special types of lamps, tiny refrigerators!" she exclaimed. "It's mad."  
  
Behind them, Tom and Carl heard the sound of very familiar voices approaching the yard from inside the house and turned to face 'their' kids. Nita and Kit were walking side by side, almost of equal height now, talking to Dairine and Carmela over their shoulders, laughing, carrying small objects, little mementos of home. And, Carl noted, giant candy bars, some not necessarily chocolate or of Earthly origin, which had to be from Carmela—apparently, the chocolate smuggling trade was very profitable and went both ways.  
  
They emerged from the screen door, and turned to the yard.  
  
The kids had changed over time. Nita was still mousy, but there was a confidence about her that Tom couldn't remember her having around the age she was during her Ordeal. Her brown eyes were bright with knowledge, not only academically, but knowledge of herself, she knew what she was capable of, of who she was and what drove her. The Song, the War, her mother's death, had shown her that, had shaped her. But it was the smile on her face that said the most, the way she held herself erect, that both Tom and Carl liked to see. She was happy.  
  
Kit stood by her through thick and thin, just like he was doing now, a grin plastered to his face, listening to what she just must have said. His stocky, built frame, was an antithesis to Nita's lithe one, and yet they seemed to just fit. Two peas in a pod. The strength in Kit was more subdued, tempered and slightly hidden compared to Nita's brightly burning, and yet, they knew, it wouldn't take more than a nudge for it to flare into visibility, matching Nita's. Especially if someone, like Nita, or Carmela, was in danger. He was the protector, the fixer, just as Nita was the one to push and push hard, but they were equals, comfortable in each other's presence, moving together.  
  
Carl swallowed a lump in his throat and refused absolutely to look towards Tom, who probably had a sappy grin on his face. They had said, before coming over, that they would act  _normal_. So no tearing up, not in sight of the kids if they could help it. After all, it wouldn't be good for Dairine to see them like this! She was still, technically under their supervision as Advisories. It wasn't because of their desire to keep calm, manly demeanor.  
  
Nita's grin widened when she saw them, very quickly followed by Kit, while Dairine smirked knowingly, and Carmela rolled her eyes, fished out a dollar and handed it to the young wizard.  
"Tom! Carl!" Nita yelled. "You made it!" She ran over, with Kit hot on her heels. She hugged Tom first, and then went for Carl.  
  
Kit hugged them too, a little more sedately, though his grin was just as wide. "You guys came late to avoid packing stuff didn't you?"  
  
Carl's eyes widened, the picture of innocence. "Who, us? We're always helpful! Who wouldn't want to pack lots of little boxes into cars?"  
  
Dairine snorted helpfully behind Nita and Kit, which dissolved into giggles when Tom shot her a look of "Shhh! Destroying the effectiveness of the poker face!" Carmela might have been biting her lip just slightly as she rolled her eyes.  
  
"Speaking of little boxes." Tom cut in before someone could carry the sarcasm further. "We kind of put together a couple of gift boxes for you two." He handed Kit's over, and Carl handed Nita's over with a smile.  
  
"They've been a little, uh,  _enhanced_." He inferred. The kids eyebrows rose and they looked at the boxes with a mixture of trepidation and need to rip the boxes open. Carl grinned in spite of himself. "You could wait until you get to school, or you could open them now. Or, since we don't want you squirming in suspense, we could tell you the basics of what's in them."  
  
Carmela had started nodding emphatically behind Kit when Carl had mentioned the second option until Dairine nudged her.  
  
"I think we'd better wait on opening them, I don't want anything falling out during the car ride." Nita said thoughtfully.  
  
"Basics please!" Kit agreed, thought he was staring a little bit more longingly at the taped edges of the wrapping paper.  
  
Tom's mouth twitched. "Well, for starters, the boxes are  _enhanced_  with a little wizardry that made them able to hold a lot more than a normal shoebox would be able to."  
  
"By about a hundred pounds. So, nothing huge." Carl quipped, with a grin. Even Mrs. Rodriguez's eyebrows rose, and Nita looked at her box with an expression that clearly indicated ripping open the wrapping paper had become a really, really good plan.  
  
"Hush you!" Tom slapped Carl on the bicep, and then continued. "The box does contain a few little odds and ends that every college student needs. Earplugs, goldfish, ramen, playing cards-"  
"Playdough, coffee, double stick tape, brownie mix, blue jello mix, board games, and other normal stuff." Carl finished off, earning him another good natured slap.  
  
"There are," Tom continued. "A few things in there that are distinctly, ah, wizardly in nature. You're gonna want to hide those from your roommates."  
  
"Like what?" Carmela asked, very curious. Carl could see the little gears in her head turning.  
  
"A field guide to all the main wizardly sites in Boston. More specifically, things like restaurants, stores, and such. Your manuals could probably help you find them, but, they've been personally vetted by us on a previous trip. The places we liked the most." Tom explained. "Of course, we put down a lot of non-wizardly sites as well."  
  
"There's also a letter of introduction to the Advisories up there." Carl said, shrugging. "We know them, and while they could, similarly, look you up in the manual, it's nice to have an extra connection when you're far from home." Mrs. Rodriguez was nodding in agreement. "And, just in case you ever really, really get home sick, there is an extra piece of a slow Sunday in each box." Carl added.  
  
Nita and Kit's eyes went wide.  
  
"That must have cost you-" Kit began.  
  
"It's worth it." Tom interrupted him, and the look he gave the pair of them was fond. "Neither one of us regret it."  
  
Nita looked like she was about to cry, Kit was looking down at his box again, trying, Carl supposed, to hide the same expression.  
  
They were, eventually, drafted to help with the packing. Not that they minded, as it wasn't a surprise. By the time they were finished, it was almost noon, far later than anyone had expected, because they still had a long car journey.  
  
"It's too bad we can't just pop there." Kit said mournfully, looking at the packed cars, standing with Tom and Carl as Nita tried to mash one more item into the back of the Callahan family car. "At least, it would make carting everything easier."  
  
Tom shook his head. "The downside to wizardry. No doing anything for yourself."  
  
Kit looked at them speculatively, and Carl smirked, swallowing a bite of the turkey sandwich Mrs. Rodriguez had made for the hungry workers. "No go kiddo." He said, to Tom's laughter. "You're going to school the normal way."  
  
Half an hour later, the Callahan and Rodriguez families were clustered in the yard, hugging and saying goodbye to one another, with Tom and Carl hanging back a little, giving them their space.  
Mr. Rodriguez and Carmela were staying home, because there wasn't enough room for them to come. Dairine was staying with them, as Mr. Callahan had to go with Nita. Dairine looked like she was fine with them leaving, but she hugged Nita just as tightly as the older sister she used to constantly fight with hugged her. Carmela repeatedly did the same to Kit, and he didn't protest once.  
  
And then, Nita and Kit were approaching them. Nita came first, a little teary. She smiled through it at both of them. "Tom, Carl, I-" She fumbled about for the right words. "Thank you. For everything. For helping us, for being there when we needed you, even if it was just when we needed someone to talk to, to hang out with-"  
  
"To let us pitch projects to you and not make us sound insane." Kit interjected, his own eyes a little watery. Carmela had clearly done a number on him. "For showing us wizardry was real."  
  
"You're—you're some of the best friends that we could possibly have." Nita said. She was choking up now.  
  
"We owe a lot to you, and you mean a lot to us." Kit said, his tone a little subdued, he gulped. "I don't know, I don't know how else to, what else to-"  
  
Tom opened his arms, and Nita flew into them, Kit into Carl's, and for a moment, for both men, nothing else mattered. This was what made all the struggle worthwhile. Guiding, teaching younger minds, watching them surpass you, and finally, letting them go. It was bitter sweet, and yet so beautiful.  
  
Carl felt as if he was shattering into a million pieces and being rebuilt at the same moment. It had crept up on him, the love he felt for these two, just as it had, though quicker for Tom. Kit was crying into his shoulder, Carl could feel the wetness, leaking into his shirt, but he didn't care, he pulled Kit closer and rocked back and forth, fighting his own tears.  
  
Tom stroked Nita's hair, kissing her forehead, whispered to her, at how proud of her he was, at how beautiful she was, how well she would do in college. He wanted to stay like this, to hold onto her forever, to both her and Kit. He wanted to travel back and time and see them as they had been, so young and on their Ordeal, just pulled by Annie into their garden. He wanted to go through it all again, watch them grow again. Suddenly, once wasn't enough.  
  
Eventually, the kids let go, and exchanged places. Carl wrapped his arms around Nita, and flashed back to a moment, years ago, when it had been just the two of them on a beach in New Jersey, as he held her, crying. Now she was crying again, but this was different. He wasn't letting her go to her death, he was letting her go, like a bird flying from the nest. His heart ached. He wanted to follow the kids to Boston, to watch over them there. He didn't want to let them drive off. He didn't even notice as Nita tightened her grip around him painfully, crying into his shirt too. He leaned down. "At least this time, I'm wearing more than a towel." He whispered to her. Nita laughed into his neck, through the tears, and pulled him tighter. "I'm going to miss you." She whispered back. "Me too sweetheart, me too." Carl squeezed her tighter.   
  
Tom cradled Kit in his arms, whispering the things that he had whispered to Nita, rubbing Kit's back, comfortingly, as if Kit was a small child. Kit had told him that, while he wanted to go to college, he hadn't wanted to leave home. Kit had responded by curling himself closer, tears soaking Tom's shirt too, now from both children. He told Kit too look after Nita, to email them constantly, not to make his mother worry. Kit nodded, unable to speak, agreed to everything, and then almost refused to let go, his hands bunching fistfuls of Tom's shirt, resisting attempts to get him off, though Tom didn't try hard.  
  
When they'd all been finally separated, tears partially dried, they four of them stood only feet from each other, each looking at one another, memorizing each other as they were, at that moment. Tom and Carl watched the children—now young adults—and could only see them as if they were at each stage of their lives. Two against the world, so much like them.  
  
"Dai Sitho." Tom and Carl said together. A hello, and a goodbye.  
  
"Dai Sitho." Nita and Kit replied, also together, holding each other's hands. Looking as if they would fall down without that touch holding them together, their voices full of tears. A hello, and a goodbye.  
  
And then they were packed into the cars, each with Tom and Carl's presents in their laps.  
Tom and Carl stood in the yard that wasn't theirs, and watched the cars start to move.  
Carl breathed in slowly, looked to Tom and hugged him around the waist. "You're doing a little internal "don't cry" manta, aren't you?" He asked softly. Not like he wasn't doing the same.  
Tom looked back and nodded, there were little pricks of moisture around Tom's eyes, glinting at the edges. Carl felt his heart—the same heart he'd tried to harden against Nita and Kit leaving—melt further. He hated it when Tom was upset, it didn't matter what it was over, it still pulled at his heartstrings. Carl reached up and gently wiped the moisture away, touch lingering against Tom's face, never mind that his hand was shaking. "Hey, it's okay. They'll only be gone for a few months, and then they have break." He was saying as much for himself now, as for Tom.  
  
"I know." Tom said, and his voice was watery. "It's the parental feeling. I don't think I really want to get rid of it."  
  
Carl squeezed Tom's waist tighter, and kissed him swiftly. "You don't have to." He said, turning to watch the cars turn around the street corner, Tom watching too. "We helped raise them." He felt tears prick at his own eyes. "They're our kids too."


End file.
